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Personal morality and choice internalism
Abstract
Moral internalism is the position that motivation is necessary for an individual to have a moral obligation or for an individual's making a moral judgment. Moral externalism is the position that there are no such necessary connections. In this dissertation I show that the internalisms proposed by W. D. Falk, the father of contemporary internalism, and Gilbert Harman, the main proponent of social internalism, are unacceptable, but that there is a form of internalism that can be adequately defended once that portion of an individual's morality it is taken to explain is precisely specified. Towards these ends, I first distinguish two forms of internalism, namely, pure internalism, the position that does not incorporate in some way, on the metaphysical or psychological level, an externalism; and hybrid internalism, the position that does in some way incorporate externalism. I argue that Falk's theory, a form of pure internalism, fails to answer an important interpretation of the "Why be moral?" question, and is not a successful explanation of all of an individual's mature morality. I argue that while Harman's theory, a form of hybrid internalism, does successfully account for an individual's social morality (the morality an individual applies to herself and to others), it is ill-suited as an account of an individual's personal morality (the morality applied by an individual to that individual alone). I then propose that an individual's personal morality is properly explained by a version of pure internalism which I call Choice Internalism. I defend Choice Internalism against the objection that internalism, in general, cannot properly distinguish real moral change from mere change in an individual's moral beliefs. Furthermore, I show how Choice Internalism satisfactorily answers important interpretations of the "Why be moral?" question, and how it holds the promise of being combinable with Harman's hybrid internalism to better account for an individual's social morality.
Subject Area
Philosophy
Recommended Citation
Kracher, Beverly, "Personal morality and choice internalism" (1991). ETD collection for University of Nebraska-Lincoln. AAI9129559.
https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/dissertations/AAI9129559